On The (Queer) Waterfront Coming to Brooklyn Historical Society

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS – An exhibition examining the LGBTQ communities that thrived along Brooklyn’s waterfront from the 1800s through World War II will debut at the Brooklyn Historical Society in March.

Designed by Avram Finkelstein. A founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives, Finkelstein co-curated and designed Brooklyn Historical Society’s upcoming exhibit On the (Queer) Waterfront.

On the (Queer) Waterfrontis the first exhibit to focus on the borough’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer history. It will put the spotlight on this often overlooked part of Brooklyn’s past which was centered primarily along the waterfront “where industrial jobs, cheap housing, and urban anonymity life [sic] provided unique opportunities for queer people to explore their own desires and discover one another,” according to a release announcing the exhibition.

Samuel Hollyer, engraved frontispiece for Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, 1855(Image courtesy of the New York Public Library)

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Featuring photographs, ephemera, artifacts, and a reading area, the exhibition will examine five trades that were popular among the LGBTQ communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries—artist, entertainer, factory worker, sailor, and sex worker.

Madam Tirza publicity still, circa 1940. Madam Tirza was a burlesque dancer who worked on and off at Coney Island from 1940 to 1953. (Image courtesy of the Collection of David Denholtz)